Characterization of microparticles with driven optical tweezers
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Updated: Jul 8, 2026
13:39
Optical Trapping of Nanoparticles
Published on: January 15, 2013
Tiffany A Wood1, G Seth Roberts, Sarayoot Eaimkhong
1School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Faraday Discussions
|January 25, 2008
Abstract:
We discuss how actively-driven optical tweezers may be used to characterize Brownian microparticles. Two experiments are described in detail. We follow the thermal fluctuations of a charged particle in an oscillatory electric field and demonstrate that charges as low as a few elementary charges can be measured accurately and reproducibly. Secondly, we measure the orientational dynamics of a trapped rotating droplet and use circular polarimetry within optical tweezers to determine in situ birefringence.
